In response to a question on LinkedIn Answers:
Question Details:
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While facilitating a workshop on interpersonal communication and work-life skills (for adult professionals) I was asked whether "good old fashioned" work ethics and language skills (speaking and writing; English primarily) that we know from corporate and government experience are still relevant as we experience 24-7 flex work hours, world-wide communications, diverse colleagues, abbreviated language (IMs and texting), and more. Do we need to re-define acceptable standards as we teach today's youth how to succeed in the workplace? Your thoughts and perspectives will help with future workshops.
My answer:
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There are two aspects to the question you've asked, which are (a) 'traditional work ethic' and what happens to it, and (b) 'whether language skills will change in their significance'. I'll address them separately.
Clearly the value of consistent hard work in acheiving a defined goal won't go away any time soon - don't think anyone would disagree with that. However, what 'work' means may change - rather than the sort of regular grind that typically constituted our grandparents' working lives (40 years working for the same employer), it's likely to be a lot more fluid, with different jobs and skills at different times in our lives. Emphasis will be on flexibility, real-time collaborative working, constantly adapting to change, learning constantly. We cannot any longer abdicate management of our careers to paternalistic companies, and now need to be very aware of our personal value, relevance and, critically, brand.
In response to the second part of the question, I would argue that now more than any time in the past, great communication skills are the differentiator between people who are effective and those who aren't. Being able to effectively motivate and persuade people we've never met through the medium of text, as we do now so often within the Web 2.0 universe, is crucial. Our writing and language skills are the medium through which we communicate ideas, arguments, emotions.
'Txt spk', or abbreviated language, is an artefact of using phone keypads or touch screens to generate text, and the now irrelevant capacity of networks to carry large volumes of data (the 160 character limit of SMS is a particular bugbear of mine!). Once voice recognition or other text capture mechanisms become more useful and integrated, it'll disappear except as a deliberate affectation.
Think of how the great contemporary communicators use language - do Seth Godin, or Barack Obama, or Steve Jobs use abbreviated language? No, of course not. Essentially their use of grammar, punctuation, and vocabulary is that of any educated person. Reality is that our ability to produce brief, clear and persuasive text in our language of choice (though realistically that probably means English or Chinese!) will be the difference between those who succeed and fail on the Web 2.0.
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